Oof, I have been terribly remiss in keeping up with this website. Thanks to a change in vacation policy, I found myself burning a lot of saved hours in December. This was a welcome change from being on the road nearly continuously leading up to the holidays. As much as I love traveling, I didn’t realize how exhausted I was.

With the new year, we welcomed a new addition to our fur-family: a second rescue dog that we’ve named Guinness! Between this change and playing catch-up on everything I missed over the holidays at work, I’ve had my hands full.

A lot of my remaining free time has been split between a few shows, books, and Destiny 2 (if you have it on the PS4, let me know!)

With the slew of negative changes coming to the Citi Prestige (in addition to a higher annual fee), I opted to downgrade my card to the Premier. While it doesn’t have an airfare credit, it offers faster points earning for day-to-day purchases and has a substantially lower annual fee. The retention specialist I spoke to was very understanding about the change and was actually apologetic. I suspect they were dealing with a high number of similar conversions.

Finally, while nothing has been set in stone, there has been discussion of a short trip to New Orleans which should be exciting. I do plan on leveraging my AmEx Platinum [referral link] card to help offset the travel cost when we do head down.

I received an email today that the Senior VP of Hyatt Loyalty, as well as his coworkers, will be hosting an AskMeAnything (AMA) on Reddit. The AMA will take place on November 16th at 12 PM Central Time. Have your questions ready and remember to be civil!

I just received an email for affordable round-trip companion tickets from the US to Italy, courtesy of Alitalia!The sample fare they showed was from JFK to Milan for under $700. That is including all taxes and fees, per passenger. You can get all the details and search for flights on Alitalia’s website.

I spent this morning putting down the bulk of my bucket list. Given its nature, it is perpetually changing as I learn about new places and visit others. Looking forward to cross off some items from the list over the coming years!